As a continuation of last week’s post, I’d like to look a few more larger lessons that can be drawn from the events surrounding the decline and fall of Knox Theological Seminary (KTS). As a student at the school in the fall of 2006, my stay there, however brief, allowed me to witness part of the drama firsthand.
Last week, I outlined a couple lessons, the first of which was that God is faithful to his people, sometimes in unexpected ways. As a personal testimony to this, I related how my stay at KTS allowed me to meet John Robbins and, with his guidance, to write the manuscript for what would become the book Imagining a Vain Thing: The Decline and Fall of Knox Seminary. To that point in my life, it never once occurred to me that I would ever be an author. The fact that this actually happened is something that still to this day strikes me with amazement. I didn’t go to seminary planning to write a book. I had gone there to study for the ministry. But God had a different plan.
A second lesson Christians can take from the problems at KTS is the danger Roman Catholic trained faculty pose to Protestant institutions of learning. Dr. Warren Gage, the central figure in the decline and fall of KTS, nominally was a Presbyterian, but his cast of mind was distinctly Roman Catholic. In part this can be attributed to the fact that he took his Ph.D from the University of Dallas, a Roman Catholic school. But Dr. Gage is certainly not the only professor at a Protestant school to have received his professional training at a Roman Catholic or Jesuit university. These Romanist trained teachers pose a genuine threat to the doctrinal soundness of the Protestant colleges and seminaries where they are employed.
But as important as these lesson are, they are not the only ones that can be taken from the unfortunate events at KTS. So let us move on to continue some additional points.
Lux Lucet 